Director and owner, Richard Paul, said it is vital resellers know how to offer security because it’s an important revenue stream.

“Service revenue is becoming more and more important with the narrowing of margins as far as hardware goes,: he said. "Any new service that resellers can add for their customers is important.

“If you want your communications and your data to be private then encryption technologies are one of the ways to make that happen and Virtual Private Networks [VPNs] are the most common way. It’s our philosophy to try to have our integrated installers as trained and as capable as possible. We spend a lot of time and energy in training our resellers.”

Paul said as faster internet begins to gain momentum more services will be provided over those links.

“Which is great for people who want to use the internet as their LAN, but it has a new potential of security threats. Therefore thought needs to go into how voice, video and data services are protected," he said.

“I’ve always had the attitude that emails are not private. Anything that you write in an email you need to be prepared for anyone to read. Don’t write anything in an email that you wouldn’t write on the back of a postcard.”

Paul said most people don’t know how to set up a secure connection. “That’s what the systems integrator or reseller is there for. While there’s a lot of end customers and small business that take pride in doing things themselves they really should consult with a security expert if they are concerned about it.”

Paul said the offer of training usually comes from his side. “We’ll make the offer before resellers do their first install or go ahead with a project so they can get their team up to skill.”

He expects to see more sales of IP Phones, IP PBXs, and more investment in network attached storage because, “People are able to share data repositories between branches or between two locations which with slower internet speeds was a bit more difficult to do.”

Paul said the biggest market for VPN technology has been a retail branch store to its head office. “We’ve always had a good market and uptake for VPN technology, but the limiting factor being ADSL data speeds. Now people who can get VDSL or UFB are more likely to invest in VPN technology.”

He said the coming of VDSL and UFB will mean changing opportunities for resellers around more VOIP products as well as IP camera technology. Resellers had an opportunity to be creative in providing solutions in the sections to customers.

Paul said Snapper Net is moving a lot of VDSL routers that have the capacity to connect to fibre when the time comes. “Some resellers are future proofing their customers with a router that also has an Ethernet WAN port so that when they go to a UFB service they don’t need to change their router."

The head of tech support at Snapper Net is Paul’s brother, Byron. He is currently the only NZ Certified Mobotix IP camera trainer and also teaches configurations of Cyberoam and Draytech security products as well as VOIP configurations.

Paul said IP cameras would be one of the next big movers for resellers as they are beginning to be used for many other types of applications such as monitoring production lines for abnormal changes.

“There are many more applications for IP cameras than just your traditional security CCTV type application. Industrial control in factories for example, keeping an eye on machinery. Cameras can give alerts if things don’t look the way that they’re supposed to. We have a recent example in a wood mill where a camera keeps an eye on wood coming down a conveyor belt. The camera can make alerts if things are outside a certain range.

“We have a network of installers up and down the country who are coming up with really fantastic uses for this technology, which is keeping us challenged.”

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